Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [138]
“Okay. No, I don’t want to go to Hot Springs.”
Mano shrugged. “I just asked.”
“Nice seeing you again.”
In the end, Mano wandered off with his beer bottle, went up to the row of punks, and whispered to one of them. The punk got up and Mano sat down. Jack turned away. He felt terribly uncomfortable. He guzzled the last of his beer, hoping it would cool him off. He did not want to see Mano again. He did not want to see any of these people. He did not like the place at all. He did not know what the hell he had come in here looking for, anyway. Unless it was the ghost of Billy. And that was stupid. The ghost of Billy—even the ghost—would have better things to do than hang around a poolhall, even the poolhall he had been arrested in. This was Billy’s headquarters on that last desperate trip to California when his stake was gone and there didn’t happen to be any squares around who would play him and he had to go out writing bad checks to get eating money, and this was the place where the two big plainclothesmen came in and picked him up with everybody in the joint looking the other way and some of them sidling out the back door, while Billy looked up at the two hard bored faces and grinned and cracked a joke that nobody laughed at, and went out between the cops, telling the houseman to keep his stick for him, walking jauntily, with that nigger-strut cakewalk shuffle he affected to show he wasn’t pretending to be anything he wasn’t, down the stairs to his own death. Only he didn’t know he was going to die in San Quentin. And he probably wouldn’t have if Jack hadn’t come along. But I didn’t kill him, Jack thought furiously, he killed himself. But over me. He really did that.
Jack got up and went down the counter to the check-out stand. The small, balding man behind the counter eyed him blankly.
“Do you still have Billy Lancing’s cue?” The words came thickly up out of his throat.
“Private stick?” the man asked in a bored voice.
“He left it here four or five years ago. He ain’t been back.”
The man bent down and came up with a thick dusty ledger book, flipped it open, and began going down a list of names and numbers. Then, with his finger on a line in the book, he looked up and said, “Four eight five.”
“Is it here?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” the man said. “You could look in the tray.” He pointed to a high dark wood cabinet of trays. Jack went over, found the drawer, opened it, found the numbered slot. The cue was there, a Willie Hoppe Special. Jack lifted it out. It had a fine layer of dust on the exposed side. It was still a good cue.
“Is it yours?” came a voice from behind Jack. The man from the counter was there, to see that Jack didn’t steal anything.
“No. The guy it belongs to is dead. He died over two years ago.”
“Oh? Yeah?” The man did not seem to care. “But it’s not your stick.”
“No. I guess you ought to sell it.”
“How do we know the guy’s dead? People leave their sticks here a long time.”
“He’s dead. Take my word. I saw him die.” Jack stared hard at the man. “At least, I saw him knifed. He died in the hospital, later.”
“Put the stick back. I’ll have to ast Earl. Thanks.”
“I loved him,” Jack said to this complete stranger. “But, see, I never told him about it.”
The man made a face. “Oh, yeah. Well, well.” He waited for Jack to replace the cue in its slot, and then went back to his counter. Jack went down the front stairs to Market Street, the heaviness still in his chest.
So he had finally admitted it, in the only possible set of words he could use. Still, he did not feel any better. He had loved Billy and it hadn’t done any good. He loved Sally, he told her about it many times, but it didn’t do any good. He loved little Billy but it didn’t do any good. They were gone, and out of his stupid pride and cowardice he would not go looking for them. Suddenly he wanted to get into a fight. He was off parole, he could get into a fight if he wanted to. It would only mean a few days in jail at worst. It would feel good to bash somebody in the mouth.